


How to Do Things with Spells (With Apologies to JL Austin)

by azurish



Category: Howl Series - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Academia, Crack, Gen, POV Outsider, Philosophy, Pre-Canon, Yuletide Treat, analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, very silly jokes about analytic philosophers' parochialism and their hate-on for continental work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 01:15:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13136085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurish/pseuds/azurish
Summary: According to Diana Wynne Jones, Howl wrote his doctoral thesis on Spells, and his first degree was in Philosophy ("probably Philosophy with something-or-other"). Which raises the question: how exactly does one successfully propose a dissertation on spells in a philosophy department?





	How to Do Things with Spells (With Apologies to JL Austin)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dirtybinary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtybinary/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, dirtybinary! Until I read your excellent [Yuletide letter](https://dirtybinary.dreamwidth.org/4306.html), I had absolutely no idea that Howl apparently [wrote his dissertation on spells](http://dirtybinary.tumblr.com/post/159367597518/how-howl-got-into-ingary). Very unfortunately, I happened to be working on my own dissertation proposal right as I read your letter. Doubly unfortunately, I happened to be doing so at exactly the sort of stodgy British institution that cultivates the attitudes sent up in this fic. This fic is the result. I hope it's not *too* direly obscure/pretentious - or at the very least is funny enough for a silly joke about [analytic](https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/bridging-the-analytic-continental-divide/) [philosophy's](https://philosophynow.org/issues/74/Analytic_versus_Continental_Philosophy) [ridiculous](http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2003/08/derrida_and_bul.html) [insularity](https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/3911/derrida-searle-debate-any-information). =) Title is a reference to JL Austin's _How to Do Things With Words_ , a book that both serves as a beautiful exemplar of analytic philosophy's in-house style and has an easily parodied title. :D

The first week of Michaelmas term at Swansea was always exhausting, and this Wednesday was proving to be no exception to the timeworn pattern that Monday had inaugurated.  Dr. Richard Hale had been trapped in a faculty meeting all morning and then required to deliver a lecture to an unlikely lot of the first year undergraduates before lunch.  He had entirely forgotten about the meeting he had arranged with his second new doctoral student at one o’clock, and it was pure luck that he had decided to have a snack in his office rather than brave the autumn cold for lunch down at the local pub.  When the young man knocked on the door, Dr. Hale hurriedly swallowed the last slice of orange and shoved the peel into a coffee cup teetering on top of a large pile of paperwork on his desk.

He scrabbled for his planner in the detritus on his desk but had to stop when his search threatened to upend the precarious balance he had cultivated among the stacks of paper and books.  He’d have to rely on his own vague recollections for the young man’s name and proposed research agenda, then.  “Ah, Jenkins, isn’t it?” he hazarded, as the student in question entered the room.  “Howard Jenkins?”

“Howell,” the young man replied cheerfully, as he picked his way through the books on the office floor to reach the free chair before Hale’s desk.  “Pleasure to meet you.”

Howell Jenkins looked like an eager young man, with bright, sharp features and an easy, self-assured smile.  The yellows in his striped shirt brought out the color in his pale green eyes.  In Hale’s opinion, he wore his dull brown hair slightly too long in the back – but apparently that was all the rage now among the male students.

“Well, Mr. Jenkins, what are you going to propose in your prospectus?” Hale asked, adjusting his glasses so he could peer over them at Howell.  He had found that the abrupt approach worked best with new graduate students, and so he’d taken to beginning as he intended to carry out, with a minimum of small talk and a maximum of shop talk.

Howell appeared absolutely unruffled by the brusque approach, although he did seem slightly thrown when he discovered that there was absolutely no free space on the floor around the desk for putting down his satchel.  He settled for resting it in his lap.  “I’d like to work on spells,” he said, as he dug through his bag for a pad of paper and a ballpoint pen to take notes on the meeting.

Hale blinked.  “I’m sorry?”

“I’d like to study magic,” Howell replied, looking up and meeting his new mentor’s eyes at last.  “During my last semester at uni, I started getting interested in spells, and it occurred to me that no one’s really taken a solid crack at the topic in the last few decades – and I think I should try my hand at filling that lacuna in the literature.”  He smiled faintly to himself and Hale found himself wondering whether he’d find “lacuna in the literature” written in Howell’s prospectus draft or somewhere in his research statement.  The phrase was far too practiced for him to have come up with it on the spot, whatever he wanted his supervisor to believe.  “So I reckoned I might as well give the study of magic a go.  Implement a practical research agenda based in some of the theoretical work on spells that I’ve come across – the words of old spells and their forms and the like.”

“Oh, you mean the history of magic?  How conceptions of the supernatural informed early modern epistemology and all that?  There are some very respectable scholars working on that topic right now,” Hale said, leaning back in his chair with a contented nod. “I’ve heard good things about Keith Thomas’s _Decline of Magic_ – good things indeed _._   Did you read history as an undergraduate?  It would help if you had a firm grounding in the field, as I’m afraid I won’t be capable of much assistance.”

“Oh, no, I’d just like to learn more about spells,” young Howell said firmly.  “How they work, what they do – that kind of thing.”

“How they work,” Hale repeated faintly.

“Yes,” Howell said.

Hale tried again.  “You’re proposing to do your doctoral research in Philosophy on … magical spells?”

“Right, exactly,” Howell said, with the relieved air of a tutor who had finally gotten a first-year pupil to grasp a fundamental concept.

Hale cast about for an appropriate response to his new student’s declaration that he intended to use the department’s support to facilitate his becoming some sort of occultist.  With instincts born of training over a dozen graduate students despite occasionally having no idea what the hell their research was actually _about_ , he tried, “Is anyone else working on, ah, spells?”

Howell’s green eyes took on a distant cast.  “I think there are some people who study it – but they live far away; I’ve been struggling to make contact.  I’m working on it.  It’s all a bit new  to me …”

The light suddenly dawned on Hale.  A topic he’d never heard of, with terminology he found frankly baffling, worked on mainly by people in foreign parts?  It could only mean one thing.

“Oh, it’s one of those _Continental_ topics, is it?” he said, with some satisfaction at having nailed down the problem.

Howell frowned.  “I’m not sure I follow, Dr. Hale.”

“I’d imagine it’s studied in, oh, France, Germany, Hungary, those sorts of places?” Hale asked, smiling benevolently.

“Ingary,” Howell muttered.

“Of course, of course,” Hale said, having hit his stride.  “Well, I can’t say I’m especially familiar with anything that Continental lot are working on these days.  But I have read my Heidegger – though I’d be the first to admit that it’s been a while – and they can’t have gotten _that_ far since Heidegger, can they?  Too busy throwing around words like Dasein and bricolage and – and _spells_ , I expect, to really get to grips with proper philosophy, if you ask me.  Still, there’s no harm in exploring a different intellectual tradition in your first year.”

Howell looked perplexed.  “I can’t say I entirely understand, er, Dasein –”

“And I doubt anyone does!” Hale interrupted.  “Heidegger should really have read some Russell first to see how a proper philosopher lays out his terms.  But Lord knows every young man wants to try something his elders find scandalous.  Why, when I was your age, every rebellious first-year doctoral student worth his salt was reading Habermas!  So I’d be happy to sign off on this spells project, and I suppose you’ll just have to keep me updated as best you can on your progress.”

“You’d be happy to sign off on it?” Howell echoed, seizing onto the most important part of Hale’s statement.

“Certainly,” Hale said, with a careless wave of one hand that nearly sent a stack of books on his desk flying.  “We’ll just have to meet again in few weeks, after you’ve gotten a proper start on, er, _spells_ , and then you can explain how you’ve been getting along.”

“Oh.  Well.  All right,” Howell said, and he closed his notebook, in which, Hale observed, he had taken absolutely no notes.  “Is that – is that all, then?”

“Indeed,” Hale replied, and after scheduling a meeting during a convenient time slot in six weeks’ time, he dismissed Howell from his office with a friendly wave.  The young man seemed vaguely confused at having had his prospectus approved so readily, but however enthralled he might be by Continental gobbledygook, he was evidently bright enough not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Spells indeed,” Hale muttered, once he was gone.  “What _will_ these Continental types think of next.”

Still, Howell had seemed like a sharp young fellow, and Hale was sure they’d make a decent philosopher of him yet.  Just as long as he grew out of this whole _spells_ business and got to grips with a proper problem of philosophy, working on something exciting like the implications of distinguishing between an utterance’s illocutionary and perlocutionary forces or what it meant to attribute intentionality to a speech act.  Hale made a note to propose the latter to him during their next meeting – though he had seemed awfully set on spells as a topic …

Hale shook his head.  Ah, well.  Not everyone could be cut out for the difficult work of philosophy, after all.


End file.
